Hawking is doing a really bad job to atheists here: he's becoming as anti-scientific as one can get...
Science has its very defined principles, as they are: they don't have to contradict all of: philosophy, mathematics, physics, (and so on...).
This is a really sad story: he simply seems to be a really sad and angry person (personally, I would be worse, in his actual state...), and this seems to influence all of his excogitations...
He is making science (and many times his personal opinion, that is: his personal theories) an absolute fact.
It doesn't matter how many real science he's providing: if you take 90% of truth, and mix in 10% of lies, then the result can't be true...
He claims that evolution (a statistically impossible theory) has to be taken as a fact, "forgetting" that one of his colleagues, and many others, already have proven it wrong.
It's not important what I think now, or what you think now, future will show! The current science might be blind -- remember, it's not absolute -- as it already happened many times in history...
Smart? He mostly offers superficial pseudo science, which doesn't hold more profound investigation.
The difference between a mediocre scientist and a really smart one is (as always) in the details. He sounds smart at first (many people could do the same; only very few are really smart though).
He's the perfect guy to mislead you in any wrong direction, if you simply "eat" all of his "science". To me, he's the typical representation of someone able to shout out loud and successfully, without really saying anything really scientific.
You have to be scientific, not only sound so. And, science is not absolute -- nothing is absolute -- but he puts science in an absolute position, which is simply not scientific, but already his religion...
Wrong question. The real one would be "what is your faith?", because all of us need to believe in something (that is, nobody is auto-sufficient, we all depend on many many things outside of us, we base our existence on a long history etc.).
And (very important), if you ask "what is your faith/belief?", nobody can escape the question saying "not relevant".
Hawking is doing a really bad job to atheists here: he's becoming as anti-scientific as one can get...
Science has its very defined principles, as they are: they don't have to contradict all of: philosophy, mathematics, physics, (and so on...).
This is a really sad story: he simply seems to be a really sad and angry person (personally, I would be worse, in his actual state...), and this seems to influence all of his excogitations...